Tag Archives: jason statham

Jan 14 2024
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Movies

Movie Review – The Beekeeper (2024)

He keeps bees and kicks ass, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of this awesome action flick.

There was something strangely satisfying when Jason Statham straps a sleazy cyber scam artist to the bumper of a pickup truck. The fraudster, responsible for conning countless people out of their money, including his beloved landlady Mrs. Parker (Phylicia Rashad), promises Statham’s Adam Clay a fortune in NFTs and crypto if he’d just let him go, but Clay prefers vengeance to riches and rigs his truck so that he can hit the gas without being in it, sending truck with attached fraudster flying off the side of a bridge.

Yup. It’s THAT kind of movie. Think Deathwish for the modern age, if Charles Bronson were called back into action to mow down the trashier side of Silicon Valley, no obviously not the tech gurus that bring us all kinds of neat gadgets but rather, the ones who pray on the innocent and swipe their loot. TBH, in real life I’m not sure how closely related those fraudsters are to the legit technosphere, though this film imagines them working hand in hand as secretive wing that finances the otherwise legit wing of a tech wunderkind’s empire (he played by Josh Hutcherson).

Jeremy Irons and Minnie Driver lend star credit to the film and while it is full of plotholes and has a B movie vibe (no pun intended), it is, IMO one of the best action flicks I’ve seen in awhile, though I’m not sure if that is saying much as Hollywood hasn’t done well with the genre in a long time.

Statham stars as Clay, who at first appears to be a humble keeper of bees, renting a barn on the property of retired schoolteacher Mrs. Huxtable, I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker and BTW it’s cool to see Phylicia Rashad in a movie. When she is conned into losing all her money to online fraudsters, she commits suicide. Unfortunately for the fraudsters, Clay is no ordinary Beekeeper but rather, a member of a secret organization called “the Beekeepers” and there’s a whole schtick about how they “maintain the hive” and “smoke out hornets” and TBH all of that seems a bit silly and unnecessary but it works as a device to explain how Statham’s character got to be so kick ass and how these chumps chose the wrong lady to mess with given her friendship with a badass hombre.

Clay is hunted by FBI Agent Verona Parker, the daughter of the late Mrs. Parker, who at first suspects Clay in her mother’s death, then starts rooting for him, but then as Clay’s carnage starts taking out scores of bad guys and numerous exploding buildings, realizes this mayhem can’t continue and he has to be stopped. It does seem a little silly that a daughter wouldn’t just sit back and relax while an ex clandestine agent cooks her mother’s tormentors in one great big weenie roast but there needed to be some drama to the film.

I have long been a Jason Statham fan but it has saddened me that in recent years his films, IMO, have been lacking. His best years seemed to be behind him as Hollywood didn’t know what to do with him, perhaps just because his brand of action went out of style and the poor guy seemed like a pit bull who would gladly attack if his handlers would just let him off the chain.

Well, he’s let off and then some and it’s classic Statham you haven’t seen since he’s early Transporter days, where he’s fighting multiple dudes at the same time and kicking ass, taking names, rattling off one liners, making the bad guys crap their pants with fear. Irons and Driver build up the suspense – it’s a bit hokey as they launch into this whole routine of “Oh, you’ve incurred the wrath of a beekeeper, you’re done for” but it works.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching a movie in January.

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Jun 03 2021
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Movie Review – Wrath of Man (2021)

File under: when a movie looks good and turns out to be bad.

BQB here with a review of Wrath of Man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my4eXuV0MbI

I love Jason Statham. Really. I’ve been hooked since his Transporter films.

I like Guy Ritchie though sometimes he is hit – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and sometimes he is miss (King Arthur.)

With 2019’s The Gentlemen showing Guy Ritchie still had “it” and reuniting with Statham (also in LSTB), I thought this movie would be the bomb dot com but instead it’s the fizzle fo shizzle.

Why? It’s entirely too complicated, and unnecessarily so.

A good mystery can be fun…and oftentimes, when the mystery is too mysterious, I’ll suspend disbelief and nod and say to myself, “Yeah, I can’t really expend the mental energy needed to figure out if what everyone is doing/saying really does add up to X character being the culprit but I’ll smile and nod because overall this movie was fun.”

Just didn’t happen here.

Weird because the premise is cool and ironically, this is the most boring movie about armored car heists I have ever seen. Like, the bullets are flying and the bombs are exploding and I’m yawning because holy moly who cares.

Strangely, the premise is interesting. Fortico Security has had many of its armored trucks robbed as of late. Amidst this turmoil, Statham’s “Mr. H” is hired as a new security guard. The first ten-twenty minutes are a lot of exposition, presented badly, way too much telling and not enough showing, almost like one of those video games where your main character meets their BFF NPC who gives them a tour of the new digs and introduces you to everyone. Lame.

It starts to look like it might redeem itself when Mr. H’s truck is robbed and he displays some pretty badass skills against the robbers, kicking their butts easily and leaving everyone wondering how a poorly paid security guard can fight like a karate expert.

This is the grand question of the film and you watch and watch and watch as threads are pulled but never quite sewn back together. I waited for an explanation, weeding through possiblities like maybe he’s an undercover cop, maybe he’s a rival bad guy, maybe this, maybe that.

I never got the answer and ultimately had to google it to find out it’s in the middle of the film in a flashback that didn’t really seem like a flashback. It was a rather poorly placed flashback that seemed like part of the present if you ask me.

STATUS: Not shelf-worthy, a rating I rarely give but it truly did suck – which is surprising because it includes a director I like, a main star I like, as well as a cast I like, full of big names – Josh Hartnett, Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan and so on. But hey, pizza is good and orange juice is good but mixing two good things doesn’t always mean the result will be good.

I wonder if maybe this is, to my knowledge and I could be wrong, Ritchie’s first film set in America. Maybe all his dialogue sounds better coming out of Brits but I don’t think so. His dialogue is usually more stylish than this. And while he is from that Tarantino-esque 1990s school of directors who like to put the end in the middle and the beginning at the end and the middle after breakfast, it was just too much complication without enough payoff.

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Aug 05 2019
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Movie Review: Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw (2019)

This review will be brief.

As action movies go, its OK.   It’s worth the price of admission and fun to watch on the big screen.  On the other hand, it isn’t something that I’m clamoring to watch again.

The Fast and Furious movies have always required suspension of disbelief in their brand of putting awesome stunts above little nit picky things like laws of physics and gravity and so on.  Probably the most unlikely suspension though is that the Fast and Furious team accepts Shaw (Statham) as one of their own even though in a previous film, he openly murders one of their teammates in a gruesome way.  I guess eventually that becomes something we’re supposed to forget and frankly, I think most people do because it is silly to expend too much brain power on these films.

Hobbs (The Rock) a government agent who sometimes chases and sometimes works with rhe F and F crew, teams up with Shaw to help save Shaw’s sister (Vanessa Kirby) who has been implanted with a capsule containing a virus that could destroy the world.  Once a pair of awesome badasses, now they kind of look like old bald men going off on an adventure with some young chick paid to act like they are interesting.

Idris Elba picks up a payday as the villain but we won’t hold it against him.

There are some great scenes and it is fun and at one point, The Rock pulls a helicopter down with a chain.  Like I said, it’s fun and worth a ticket but it’s not something you’d want to see again and again.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Aug 18 2018
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Movie Review – The Meg (2018)

Sharks bite and so does this movie…except it’s a movie that is aware it kind of bites, so come to think of it, it doesn’t bite then, by the transitive non-bite property.

Whatever.  BQB here with a review of “The Meg.”

I’ve always been a big Jason Statham fan.  He was really a sight to behold in his “Transporter” days, taking on 3, 4, or more bad guys in one sitting with his sweet karate moves.

He’s still got the swagger, though we aren’t treated to the martial arts as much as we once were, which is a shame, because a roundhouse kick to a shark face would have been awesome.

Here, we don’t have just any shark.  It’s a Megalodon or “Meg,” a 70 foot long prehistoric monster that has come out of hiding to feast upon human flesh and any flesh will do, ranging from puppies to adorable little Asian kids just trying to swim on a beach to, yes, even a middle aged bald British kung-fu master.

Here’s the short version – this movie was good, but it could have been great.

It’s good in that it is a good time.  The special effects are fun.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously.  The plot isn’t that involved.  It’s more or less an homage to killer monster and/or killer shark movies of the past.  Tropes galore and if a dude makes a dumb expression as he looks into something then rest assure he’s about to lose his face.

It could have been better in that better writing might have kicked this film into second gear.  The characters are cookie cutters – forgettable fodder and of the many who become shark chow, maybe there’s like, one or two who you actually feel bad about.  Statham carries the film on his back and Ruby Rose as a sexy sea lab designer occasionally takes some of the burden, though she is underutilized and her unique look does most of the work.

The plot?  Jonas Taylor (Statham) is an expert when it comes to deep sea rescue missions, because apparently, they happen so often that people specialize in this sort of thing.

Alas, he’s been laughed out by his former colleagues, accused of being a drunkard after claiming during one mission that he saw a big ass shark.

Blah, blah, blah, the shark attacks his former homies and his homies eat a shit ton of crow in order to get him to save the day.

Rainn Wilson plays the eccentric billionaire who funds the research expedition that’s in danger of becoming shark lunch.  He excels at playing a dick and may find a career resurrection as the go to movie dick guy.

Bingbing Li (awesome name) plays Statham’s love interest and other than that, there are a bunch of other losers who are given absurd pieces of dialogue and honestly, just end up being so annoying you can’t wait for them to get in the mega shark’s belly.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  To repeat, it’s good, but missed a shot to be great.  Still worth seeing in the theater due to intense big ass shark scenes.

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